[Air-l] Google scares me again

[Dr. T. Michael Roberts]

It is convenient for me when I want to find something
or be found by someone. It is inconvenient as hell
when I want to hide something or not be found by
someone. Privacy is no longer a naturally occurring
condition. Anyone can find out anything now. We all
have privacy now only to the extent that some of the
things that anyone can do are illegal and these laws
are enforced.   
--- "jerichob at juno.com" <jerichob at juno.com> wrote:

> This strikes me also as being analogous to
> all-in-one ID cards (e.g. 
> campus IDs or various proposals for national ID
> cards) - where once a 
> person's records were held in discrete offices and
> therefore much more 
> difficult to collate for profiling or investigative
> purposes, now 
> there is handy access to the whole package through
> linked records.  
> Who is it convenient for? 
> 
> Jericho
>   
> 
> -- Michael Zimmer <michael.zimmer at nyu.edu> wrote:
> Hi Ellis -
> 
> Well, it is convenient when my grocer tracks my
> purchases through my  
> frequent shopper card so I can count on certain
> items remaining in  
> stock (assuming I'm not the only one buying them).
> And perhaps it is  
> helpful for Google to provide an advertisement for
> digital cameras if  
> I search for "Olympus Stylus". That's using
> particular bits of my  
> activities in order to taylor a particular service
> to me.
> 
> But it's a difference in kind when my activities
> that were previously  
> dispersed across various products, services, and
> locations can be  
> tracked an aggregated into a single source. And it's
> also a  
> difference in kind when that information is
> processed in order to  
> create some kind of psychological profile of what
> kind of a person I  
> am (not just what beer I buy or what I happen to be
> searching for  
> that day). Who knows what kind of decisions might be
> made based on  
> such an attempt to profile my psyche. (I'm thinking
> of issues raised  
> in: Bowker & Star's "Sorting Things Out:
> Classification and its  
> Consequences", Gandy's "The Panoptic Sort: A
> Political Economy of  
> Personal Information," and Lyon's "Surveillance as
> Social Sorting:  
> Privacy, Risk, and Digital Discrimination" )
> 
> And I have yet to see any documentation from
> companies such as Google  
> outlining precisely what information about me they
> collect, how it  
> might be aggregated across their products &
> services, and what kind  
> of processing they perform with said data, and with
> whom it has been  
> shared with. The typical "privacy policy" is
> purposefully vague on  
> such details.
> 
> -mz
> 
> 
> 
> -----
> Michael Zimmer, PhD
> Microsoft Fellow, Information Society Project, Yale
> Law School
> e: michael.zimmer at nyu.edu
> w: http://michaelzimmer.org
> 
> 
> 
> On Jul 10, 2007, at 3:00 PM, Ellis Godard wrote:
> 
> > Perhaps I'm new-fashioned, but I like targeted
> communications based  
> > on mined
> > data. There's always been tracking, capturing,
> aggregating, and  
> > profiling -
> > it's just getting better executed, and somewhat
> better documented,  
> > each of
> > which is arguably a boon.
> > -e
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
> [mailto:air-l-
> >> bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Michael
> Zimmer
> >> Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 6:40 PM
> >> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> >> Subject: Re: [Air-l] Google scares me again
> >>
> >> Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but I think
> psychological profiling of
> >> users based online habits is a tad more
> problematic than just
> >> "somewhat" of an ethical minefield.
> >>
> >> Microsoft recently announced their hopes to do
> something similar:
> >>
>
http://michaelzimmer.org/2007/05/23/msft-wants-to-identify-all-web-
> >> surfers-based-on-surfing-habits/
> >>
> >> One wonders if any part of one's earthly
> existence will remain
> >> untouched by those wanting to track, capture,
> aggregate, and  
> >> profile...
> >>
> >> -mz
> >
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"The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses." -  Walter Benjamin


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